Travis Kalanick, former CEO of Uber, revealed it on Wednesday. He believes the company’s decision to abandon its autonomous driving program is a mistake. At the Los Angeles rich summit, Karanick said, “Look, [new management] It killed the autonomous car project we had been continuing to do. At the time we were really just behind Waymo, but we were probably catching up, so we were going to pass it in a short order. . . When that happened, I wasn’t running a company, but you can say, “I wish we had an autonomous ride-sharing product now.” That’s great. ”
In 2020, three years after Karanick was forced to resign, Uber sold its autonomous driving forces in a fire sale reported to autonomous driving technology developer Aurora. That made sense back then. Autonomous driving was bleeding cash, and Uber had already put hundreds of millions of dollars into effort. Currently, Waymo’s self-driving cars have tools around the Bay Area, Los Angeles and Phoenix, and are jumping into new markets.
Waymo recently partnered with Uber in Austin, and Uber bets that its platform is important for the growth of its services. But business is business, and partnerships are shaking. If Waymo decides it doesn’t need an intermediary, Uber can find themselves stuck in the opposite direction after it becomes the future of transportation.
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